Evidence: Iran Supporting al-Qaeda in Iraq

Excellent reporting by The New York Sun's Eli Lake exposes that not only were Iranian senior members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps captured in Baghdad - and released due to diplomatic papers supplied them by the Iranian government - what was not turned back over to them were important documents detailing connections to individuals that are part of al-Qaeda in Iraq and associated with Ansar al-Sunna. In Iran's Secret Plan For Mayhem, it is learned that this detailed information included names and phone numbers.

Iran is supporting both Sunni and Shiite terrorists in the Iraqi civil war, according to secret Iranian documents captured by Americans in Iraq.

The news that American forces had captured Iranians in Iraq was widely reported last month, but less well known is that the Iranians were carrying documents that offered Americans insight into Iranian activities in Iraq.

An American intelligence official said the new material, which has been authenticated within the intelligence community, confirms "that Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups." The source was careful to stress that the Iranian plans do not extend to cooperation with Baathist groups fighting the government in Baghdad, and said the documents rather show how the Quds Force — the arm of Iran's revolutionary guard that supports Shiite Hezbollah, Sunni Hamas, and Shiite death squads — is working with individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna.

Another American official who has seen the summaries of the reporting affiliated with the arrests said it comprised a "smoking gun." "We found plans for attacks, phone numbers affiliated with Sunni bad guys, a lot of things that filled in the blanks on what these guys are up to," the official said.

Contrary to the Iraq Study Group's assertion that a stable Iraq is in Iran's interests, what is now evidenced is tangible proof that Iran sees its interest as killing US forces and fostering Iraq's instability through inciting and fomenting sectarian violence by fueling both sides.

This destabilizes the freely elected Iraqi government and, chiefly through frenzied media coverage of the violence Iran stirs, serves to erode US domestic support for action against the jihadiyun in Iraq today and elsewhere in the Middle East in the future.

Of the American forces killed in Iraq by insurgent roadside bombs, perhaps tallying and communicating the ratio that were killed by Iranian-made and -supplied armor-piercing precision milled shaped copper high-explosive IED's would serve to alert Americans to the true nature of the Iranian threat. Perhaps tallying the number of Iraqi civilians that have been killed by al-Qaeda in Iraq's signature car and truck bombs packed with other Iranian supplied explosives (directly or through funding) would serve the same proper purpose.

Or rather, perhaps another story of the Iranian nuclear weapons program that has yet to realize its goals to imply instead that the Iranian threat is not really imminent.

As Michael Ledeen once said in his signature curmudgeonly eloquence, "It's the terrorism, stupid."

The principal theater in the epic conflict that defines our time and will ultimately define this generation resides not in the streets of Iraq nor in the mountains of Afghanistan, but in the capital of the vast Islamist state that lies between them.

We as a nation have simply not arrived there yet - neither emotionally, psychologically or physically. Short of an internal revolt by the Iranian people - with or without our dutiful and proper support - our impending approach to the epicenter of this conflict is inevitable.

Doesn't the fact that they're talking to both sides suggest that may be they are working to stop the conflict?
Plans for attacks! What does that mean? Does the setting of IEDs require "planing". Let me guess, they had maps with them that had certain possitions maked -- so we conclude they wanted to attack those possitions.

It seems to me like we're making the same mistake that we made in South Vietman; thinking that we could fight a war in one country isolated from it's neighbors.

In Vietnam we didn't invade or fight in Laos until late in the war, and pretty much let it be known that we were not going to invade the north. We're all familiar with the restrictions placed on our bombers when they did hit the north.

Now, there were reasons for all this. After the Korean War exprience, we were afraid of drawing in China or Russia. We didn't want a WWIII.

Likewise, in Iraq we're afraid of provoking a full-scale war with Syria or Iran.

The flip side is that we've allowed Iran and Syria to fuel the insurgency and Shi'ite militias. We're unable to seal the border, thus the violence continues.

I really don't know that even if we could somehow isolate Iraq by ending Syrian and Iranian influence that would win the war. But it would sure help.